I love the void
of a Turner
Lagoon of Venice
Eternal nothingness
I love paintings that show the divide
between heaven and earth in a clean unbroken line
Water from the waters
Master of emptiness
he sculpts with light where all is cosmic
crepuscular
I love the simplicity
of an egg in a stark space
The way Freud placed something
womb-like, perfect and unexpected
next to flawed skin on a broken couch
Colour in a vacuum makes me
want to know what I come from
Where will I go?
Redness can be wetness and death
When colour behaves
it sucks you into a vortex
a mirroredness, transformation
Rothko style
Hand and eye collide
to make a deep picture plain
There is beauty in death
Hirst knows it
Vincent saw so much poetry
in stars he became one
Even Rembrandt painted
a moody carcass
Sacrifice in a tender cluster
of virgins
How we work the queer chapters
of our lives
Warm-blood Caravaggios
Cold-blood Picassos
that we are
First appeared in The Journal, UK, 2015
Image ‘Goldau’ JMW Turner
Julie Maclean 